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Safe in small quantities. Do not ingest.
Feeding of bitter melon is strictly prohibited. Loss of limbs will not be compensated.
Holy, what a day! Today was my final exam but you know what? I was like an hour late. I swear I almost hyperventilated. D:
Everything went on the same as it's always been. I jumped on the bus and got on the train at 22nd St. Ok, so Iris still holding bag? Check. Iris on train? Check. Train pulling into next station? Check. Train leaving the station in the correct way it should be going? No Check.
What the heck? I could have sworn I got on the right train. I didn't even really notice that the train was heading back to where it came from till it hit 22nd St again. When we stopped, I swear I thought I was going crazy. Did I somehow initially get on the wrong bus and wrong train? Knowing me, that's a good possibility. I remember sitting there and thinking, 'hmm, this station seems identical to other one. Hey look, it even has a guy that looks the same as the one at 22nd St handing out newspapers' (yes, I'm a little slow, lets see how you are when you have 9 exams back to back).
Okay, so the train leaves again from 22nd St. in the right direction again and we reached the next station. I paid attention this time. Leaving the station? Yup, in the wrong direction? Yup. Gawd. Hello 22nd St again. When I reached Edmond's Station (station after 22nd St.) again for the third time a row, I got off that train and ventured to the other side to go Eastbound. I knew that there was a station waaaay farther down the skytrain route that was close to school. I didn't really want to do that because it was a giant circle before we got back into Burnaby. I'd still be late if I went all the way over there....ahh what the hell.
So everything solved? Ha! No! When the train pulled into Columbia Station, officers came in and told us all that the train was heading back the same way it came, but the next train would be going the right way.....whhaaattt.....what the heck is happening here? Ok, I'll get off the train and wait for the next one then. Excellent, 15 minutes before the exam start, I am screwed. D:
I call Sarah then and asked her to tell our instructor that there's something funky going on with the trains and that I was going to be late. Hopefully they won't just give me a big fat zero. Apparently she was at Metrotown and asked me if I wanted a ride. Hmm, kind of hard since I'm at Columbia. I told her I'll try to get to Metrotown again and hunkered down to wait for the train...again. 1 minute later she calls me and tells me that there's something happening at Metrotown Station. There were police, ambulances and fire trucks. Everyone in the station and even the bus depot were being evacuated and people were running....whoa...I wonder what's up with that. She asked me where I was, and that she could come and pick me up. Too bad she didn't know where Columbia Station was but she did know Royal Oak so I agreed to meet her there. All I needed was to wait for the train.
10 minutes later....still no train. Which is weird because the Skytrain usually comes in intervals of something like 3-5 minutes. This is really weird. There are so many people confused just like me. Lots of Transit Officers too.
Woo, my phone's ringing, hey it's Sarah again. This time she tells me that they're closing Royal Oak station. People are getting kicked out and the officers were closing the gates. O__o Ok, really worried now. What the hell was happening. Hey here's the train! That's when I heard the announcement, three stations were being closed down, Patterson, the station after Metrotown, Metrotown Station and Royal Oak, the one right after Metrotown. Geeze Louise, that just threw a wrench in my plans. By this time I had something like 5 minutes left before the exam, so I told Sarah to not worry and head off to school. One of us might as well get there on time. T_T
I was already on the train already, heading back to Metrotown, so I decided to head for Edmond's station. There were buses at Edmond's Station, right? I know there's one that leaves Metrotown that heads off to Edmond's so there must be one heading back to Metrotown. I could catch one of those. Of course, even in the larger than normal crowd, it never hit me that a billion other people were also in the same boat as me. Geeze I'm stupid.
Holy groceries, there were a lot of people once I got to the bus loop. Yeeeaaahhh, I'm not getting on a bus anytime soon. So I head back to the platforms. Excellent, the trains stopped running too apparently, or so the officer told this other lady. Damn it. How am I? Just peachy. Fuzz and all.
So I head back to the bus loop and tried lining up at a line. I have no idea which goes where so I had to circle and check out each sign along with the multitude of thousands also looking for a bus. Tried lining up but yeeeaaahhh......every bus that came, left within 2 minutes because they were so full....and more were still coming. There was no line or order anywhere, watch me get trampled by the hoards heading for the bus. Good thing I don't get anxiety.
Well look at the time. I'm now 10 minutes late for my final. No, I'm not popping a blood vessel. What are you talking about? That blood's just my juice box. Ok now, I'll just head back to the train platform, maybe it's running again? Here's against hope.
Woo! The trains ARE running again but damn it was taking an extra long time to get to the station. *sigh* I'm already half an hour late....what's another couple more minutes?
This time I take the train all the way west. I'm not getting off this time. T___T
And amazingly, nothing else really went wrong after that. It still took me about half an hour to get to Brentwood station and then take a bus to school though.
Ah well, I tried. At least I arrived. Apparently I wasn't the only one late. I forgot Yegor took the bus too, only he was smarter and jumped off right away and caught the train straight to Brentwood. Grrr, I wish I did that. He tells me the trains are screwed up because someone either jumped or fell on the tracks. Dear Lord. That's bad news because not only are you on the track but unlike Edmonton, BC runs their electricity on the ground so if you step on it, you get fried by 600 volts. Lovely. Seems that Yegor experienced this once before already, only last time when the guy jumped into the tracks, he was one of the ones in the first car. Holy sumo mushrooms batman, if that happened to me, I think I would seriously have a phobia of trains after that.
I'm was so glad we have a small program. They understand that I'm never late and we're all fairly responsible. Because we know each other, we all have some leeway. If this were the university, I would have failed just on the principle that I wasn't there, regardless if it was fault or not.
So we ended up having to wait for the rest of the guys to finish before we could write our own test. No problem, it was the final, final exam after all. It's not like I have anything to do afterwards.
*sigh* Boy, what a day. I got an intimate look at each of the stations and the transit system here. It only reiterates what I knew. The buses suck here.
Maybe I should invest in a car....
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